The School Food Trust is a vibrant national charity and the Government’s source of specialist advice and expertise on children’s food, school meals, and family cooking skills, as well as delivering national grant-funded programmes. It works alongside and shares staff with the new Children’s Food Trust, a social enterprise. We want all children to have a healthy balanced diet and the food skills they need to fulfil their potential as adults.

We are looking for an experienced manager to join our top team as Director of Market Development to help us achieve success in future. As the driver behind our sales and fundraising activity, your proven expertise in building productive relationships with customers and partners will be vital alongside strong management skills and sound strategic thinking. You will be experienced in new product development, building strategic partnerships and high value income generating activity.

Overall Purpose of the role The Director of Market Development is a new role at the School Food Trust and Children’s Food Trust and the post holder will be responsible for leading our work raising income from all sources, business development, developing new markets and the penetration of existing markets. This will include leading most of our external relations work.

The post-holder will also deputise for the Chief Executive and play a leading role in the senior leadership team to steer, lead and manage the School Food Trust and Children’s Food Trust, with specific responsibilities which may change over time as the organisation develops. This will include participating in developing a strategy for both organisations and supporting the decision making the two Boards undertake. As a member of the senior leadership team the postholder will be ensuring that the Boards’ strategies for fundraising and income generation are delivered, orchestrating resources to maximum effect and assuring the quality of our work.

For the first seven months in the role you will cover the leadership work of the Business Development Manager who will be on maternity leave. On her return your role will take on more of the current work of the Chief Executive.

The key objective for the post will be to have significant funding streams in place by the time current key streams of funding reduce and to build external relationships to establish a steady stream of funding into the future.

Core Attributes

• Relationship building with external bodies and potential customers of all kinds

• Sales and fund-raising skills

• Strong wide-ranging management skills

• Board level executive experience

• Skills required to deputise for the Chief Executive

Find out more about this varied role and the opportunity to be part of a high quality & committed team working on this important agenda by clicking on the 'Apply now' button to visit our website.